Saturday, October 15, 2011

964. I think Randy is constitutionally incapable of making a comic with the correct number of panels. This one could just as easily have been a one-panel with just the poster image, but instead he created an entire worthless narrative of how Author Insert entered the dormroom and had a brilliant idea to fix the poster. That way there would only be one completely useless panel, instead of six.

Not to mention the alt-text on 964 is one of the most wrong things Randall has ever claimed. Because no one would rather own a physical thing than an immaterial digital file, right? That's why Amazon doesn't sell books anymore!

I didn't give her the bag or anything. This was just why I wasn't there to attend to her.

Busy times.

Captcha: tocke. ticke. tocke. ticke. tocke. for all the poisone we tried to produce in our precious delirious doubte, it was all for naughte for this comic's time had already begun to run its poor selfe oute. ticke. tocke. ticke. tocke.

I used to wonder the same kinda thing about itching. Is it worth it to make yourself itch just for the satisfaction of scratching it? Is it a net gain in pleasure? We need a genius scientist like Randall to make some kind of chart about it.

life is not something that we can explain, therefor we all make up reasons for our own existence (this point is not up for debate) this means that life is subjective rather than objective. in this way we experience all things differently. for instance i personally cant stand the work of Jackson Pollock however there are people who are ready to pay upwards of 1 000 000 dollars for one of his works, does this make it good? no does it then mean that it is bad but people are stupid? no all it means is that i don't like it and others do. i can fight as much as i want against pollock and what he has done to the art world but it wont make people agree with me and i wont change jack shit. this blog perplexes me in the way that it does not acknowledged the subjectivity of a simple humor comic and i would like to know if you actualy think you will change anything?

i am not saying that you are not entitled to your opinions but rather that ,from what i can tell, you are insisting that a web comic is bad because you no longer find it funny i have been observing this website for a few days now and have found nothing that insists that opinion is what drives the blog but rather what does is an attempt to prove with fact that something as subjective as a humor comic is no longer funny to everyone, but in the end the whole idea is devalued when i say that i have found XKCD funny with a few exceptions ever since i started reading it a few years ago.

@Andrew R.: You know there's a spinoff in the works? Used to be called "Avatar: Legend of Korra", but then they realized James Cameron owns the word "Avatar" (yes, they (and a fuckton of hindoos) had it first, but they lost the rights by reason of insufficient blue titties), and changed it to "The Last Airbender: Legend of Korra", which is stupid because Korra's not the last airbender, or even an airbender at all.

Anyhow, guess Randy just now heard of it. That, or he drew this comic a year ago and scheduled it for this month (when The Fast Hairbender: Legend of Korra was supposed to come out), and didn't hear that it got delayed when they doubled the order...

People keep saying that this joke is old because the show ended three years ago, but I'm pretty sure this joke became old about a week after people realized the four classical elements weren't really elements.

Yes Timofei that is just what the internet needs, Randall making a joke about the horse fuckers for idiots to repost everywhere going "Obligatory XKCD olololol". At least, I'm assuming it would be about horse fucking because of Randall's deep interest in fetishes and pornography, so presumably he would find looking at foalcon on ponibooru more interesting than the show itself.

xkcd continuously masturbates about "geekdom", but at least its definition of geekdom involves knowledge and curiosity.

now take HijinksEnsue. it masturbates as much, or more, about geekdom, but the adopted definition is watching particular television shows and owning certain consumer electronics. not building them, or even knowing how they work, but merely owning them.

I'm pretty ignorant about the Last Airbender. Is it actually good? Is there a significant adult fanbase? Is there some reason why this show should be particularly culturally relevant?

The oldest people in the show's target demographic MIGHT be entering college this year. Does this just confirm that Randall's target demographic is high schoolers?

Because really, 4 classic elements vs. the elements of science is an old joke. If Randall wanted to make that joke it seems like the more appropriate frame would be D&D (as it was in Antithesis's examples), not some kid's TV show that his fanbase should be too old for.

What is "the correct number of panels" which comic #964 doesn't comply with? Is that an established rule or did you just pull that out of the top of your head - I am using the gentlest expression I can find here.

anon 6:44 - a xkcd about horse fucking would be the best thing ever and you know it. In fact, xkcd #1000 should be just a picture of a stickman fucking a horse. It would be the very definition of perfection.

anon 7:24 - the difference is that nobody cares about Hijinks Ensue. I think I saw it before, but I couldn't even remember what it looks like. It's just one of the hundreds of boring Penny Arcade rip-offs. On the other hand, xkcd is extremely popular, which makes our hateboner grow larger and stiffer.

I used to like xkcd for the reasons you describe, then I realized it sucked, and yet I still continue to read it. On the other hand, I never really got into reading Hijinks Ensue, because it sucks in a different way.

The difference between the two is that xkcd has a good concept, spoiled by shoddy execution. Hijinks Ensue has a lame concept, albeit good execution.

Both concept and execution are essential to the overall quality of a comic. It is difficult to improve on a bad concept, but xkcd seems at least capable of producing a good comic. It's so close and yet so far. Thus the hate on this blog is fueled by the argument that xkcd could be so much better than it is.

@R.: The cartoon series is called "Avatar: The Last Airbender" or "Avatar: The Legend of Aang" overseas, never "The Last Airbender: {anything}" -- not sure what all the abomination of a movie was called.

@7:25 It's really got a pretty wide adult following. Bending follows well-defined and consistently-applied rules, and they have real character development, with out-of-character behavior to drive the plot very much the exception rather than the rule.

If you want to hear a bunch of hipster wankers like me ejaculating about how it's better than 90% of adult-targeted TV dramas, get thee to avclub.com, we just went through the first season over the summer.

Timofei, I was assuming that the joke would be that all pony fans enjoy visiting futaquestria.tumblr.com, which would be annoying and cause massive trolling from everyone. However, you are right that a stick figure fucking a horse would be the pinnacle of XKCD.

R, I think Randall could somewhat acceptably render a pony in an XKCD without tracing, but he would have to practice because getting the anatomy right is difficult until you put some time into it. That's far more effort than he is willing to put into a single strip. He already blew the production budget for the next month with the color Photoshop effect in 965 and the background in 964.

Also My Little Pony is awesome, don't be hating.

And how can I get angry about Hijinks Ensue if I didn't know it existed until now? Sure, it's terrible and the author seems retarded, but literally nobody cares about it, and he can actually draw. Depending on his skill level, it looks like it probably takes him at least an hour to ink and color one of those strips, which is more time than Randall puts into XKCD in a month.

MLP is easily the first time I've seen something gather an obsessive nerd fanbase for literally no other reason than the fact that liking it is a meme (it's probably not technically a meme but it's treated like one and the people who like it are also the kind of people who like memes so I'll call it one for convenience). It has literally no other attractive qualities. I mean, some shows get an obsessive nerd fanbase because they're a remake of something that aired 10, 15, 20 years ago and rely on manchildren who insist that anything they liked in their childhood must still be cool. Other things get such fanbases by intentionally trying to attract one (XKCD, Joss Whedon). And somethings are, you know, actually good, and have normal people who like them in addition to fandoms. But My Little Pony doesn't seem to have any of that. It's this huge thing for no other reason than the fact that it's internet cool to like it. It's baffling.

(I should clarify that while yes, MLP is a remake of something from 20 years ago, the fandom people are mostly dudes and therefore were not in its target demographic at the time. Sorry if that wasn't clear.)

I'd suggest that perhaps My Little Pony actually is the third option - a thing with general redeeming qualities that some normal subset of people think is good. But in that case I can't really think of a way explain the makeup of its fanbase without sounding like I'm implying everyone who is not an Internet Male is insecure and scared of girly things.

Hey guys, I have a bit of a problem. You see, there's this girl who lives in the same building as me. Through a sequence of events too convoluted to explain here, I have found out that she has the same obscure sexual fetish as me. The thing is, we have no mutual friends, or even mutual acquaintances. How can I hook up with her without looking like a total creep?

Here's the thing about Feminism. It requires something of a leap of intuition to understand. It's a pretty small leap, honestly, but it's a leap nonetheless. However, it's a leap that many, many people have not made. It's sort of like Math; you can have people explaining things to you for years, and your eyes just end up glazing over, but then eventually something clicks and you get it and know exactly what's going on.

Consequentially, we get people like yourself, Pkuky, who effectively have a blindspot in regard to social dynamics. You simply don't "get it." Now, feminists have spent hours and hours and hours trying to explain feminism to people like yourself, with little success, and tend to get annoyed at the whole process after a while. As I am. The result of this is the fact that people like yourself regularly have feminists yelling at them over something they've done that they can't see the problem with; to them, it's some unknowable arcane offense that's being held against them by angry women. This gives rise to, well, all of the things you've said so far. The idea that feminism isn't a legitimate facet of social analysis, and is rather simply an avenue for anti-male sexism.

This is an uninformed position, born from a lack of understanding of what, exactly, you're talking about. Once you realize this, you'll be in a much better place; you'll be trying to learn math, instead of maintaining that your math teachers do nothing but spout bullshit to make you feel stupid.

Other people will pick apart everything you've said so far, and hopefully help you realize why the vast bulk of it is absolutely bullshit, because they're better qualified to do it than I am and will probably do a better job. But seriously.

Imagine, if you will.. that in a group that had zero heavily European, particularly Western and Northern European, descended folk in it was addressed with one word, while even if there was a single heavily European descended person in the group, you used another word that meant heavily European descended people. Neither word is necessarily positive or negative, simply words.

Now imagine that you are not heavily descended from European people, assuming you are. If you aren't, then.. be you. How would you view society if you knew that any group, the moment a heavily European descended person popped in, would be addressed as though the entire group were heavily European descended. And that at times a group containing no such heavily European descended people were nevertheless addressed as though it was a group of heavily European descended people. And, of course, taking a look at the population statistics you find that heavily European descended people make up just a smidge lower than 50% of the population. How would that make you feel, overall, about your identity as a non-heavily European descended person?

But you are right, I don't think it's quite Othering. It's.. whatever the opposite would be, I guess. Which isn't including. Othering is basically focusing completely on the differences and essentially saying that there are no similarities and that no common ground could exist. This is the opposite - erasing differences completely and refusing to acknowledge them, which is.. also a problem.

I'm fairly sure the basic idea is that while it's fine to note that differences between people exist, it's not cool to focus on them. Like T-shirt color or something.

A question came up about rape and why she kept mentioning it in the piece. Everyone else in the class was kinda dumbfounded, but for some reason an adrenaline rush kicked in and I just started talking.

I talked about how rape is a silencing mechanism, how it's an oppression mechanism, how it's an othering mechanism. I talked about how victims of sexual assault/harassment/rape are commonly blamed and mocked, and how these crimes are deemed "funny" by many. I brought up shows like Family Guy (which started to make some people squirm...how dare I say their favorite show isn't totes the awesomest thing EVA) and mentioned comedians and how many shows mock the crimes and the victims. I somehow remembered RAINN's stats, and mentioned those...and how in many places in the world these things aren't even a crime.

Some bro chimed in and mentioned that dudes totes get played at the bad guys in rape though...

And then the adrenaline totally kicked in.

Are you freaking serious? Have you watched tv/listened to anything on the news about actual cases? Whenever someone is brave enough to actually go through with a whole trial, the defense is generally "well, she totally deserved it and she's trying to ruin this poor dude's life." As a society, there is really no other set of crimes to which we act this way. Murder victims (in general) aren't systematically made out to be the bad guys. Victims of theft aren't systematically made out to be some "idiot" who wasn't proactive enough about their personal bubble. It's not about "dudes being evil"; it's about a systematic tool for people who have power to keep having power and silence and discredit those who don't.

The guy looked like his world had been turned upside down, and then he kinda hung his head for the rest of the class...

What's annoying is every graphics chipset maker releasing their own driver that handles things like multihead their own way in defiance of independent standards. Can you believe nvidia *still* refuses to support xrandr?

"It is difficult to improve on a bad concept, but xkcd seems at least capable of producing a good comic. It's so close and yet so far. Thus the hate on this blog is fueled by the argument that xkcd could be so much better than it is."

Really? The writer of this blog seems to have some kind of personal Vendetta against Randall.

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

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